Saturday, December 26, 2015

It has often been observed that people who take up the art of Etegami after having mastered other forms of visual arts have a harder time producing orthodox etegami than the absolute beginner. And though one of the characteristics of Etegami is said to be its lack of rules (compared to other traditional Japanese arts), it sure doesn't seem that way to the western artist. One of the "not-a-rule-but-still..." traditions of orthodox etegami is the blank background.

Take a look at the works posted on the Japan Etegami Society website. If the page appears correctly on your screen, you will see links (near the bottom of the page) to the month-by-month archives of etegami selected from among the many submitted by JES members every year. A few of these submissions are elegantly rendered in the style of sumi-e, but the majority are somewhat awkward representations of their subjects-- in other words, Etegami at its Best! None of the images have shadows. The background is blank in every one.

The second photo I posted above is a page from the September 2012 issue of Gekkan Etegami (the Japanese Etegami Society's official magazine) which gives samples of what the JES considers exemplary etegami. Most of them are awkwardly charming, and none have any background shadows. By coincidence, I had hosted a global etegami call on the subject of tomatoes just two years earlier, in 2010. After the online exhibit came to an end, I showed the works to the members of the Etegami group I meet with every month. Like me, these Japanese ladies have been painting etegami for decades, and I wondered how they would respond to these submissions. Their comments were revealing.

While they were genuinely delighted with the artwork, and even more thrilled that interest in etegami had started spreading beyond the borders of Japan, they struggled with the question of whether the works qualified as etegami at all. "As beautiful as it is, the shadow on this one disqualifies it from being etegami," said the most experienced member of our group, pointing at the purple shadowing underneath a tomato. "It's a still life painting rather than an etegami."

They had some other intriguing responses as well. Please read the complete comments at this blog post and share your thoughts with me.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

The literal translation of the Japanese expression kyou no medama is "today's eyeball." Variations include "the eyeball of the menu," or "the eyeball of the festival," or "the eyeball of the event." It refers to a particular thing of special interest or value that is meant to attract customers or participants within a larger context-- the keynote speaker at a conference, a popular season-only item on a restaurant menu, and so on.

The silly series of etegami posted here was inspired by this expression. The wordplay going on would be clear to any Japanese speaker. A fried egg ("sunny side up" as we say in English) is called a "fried eyeball." And the eyeball creature bathing in the cracked rice bowl is Daddy Eyeball, a popular and very familiar character from the Japanese manga series Gegege no Kitaro by the late Shigeru Mizuki. At the top right is a bunch of fresh-caught fish with bulging eyes, and at the bottom right is a pair of toy pop-out eyeball glasses. I may add a few more to the series if I ever get unbearably bored with nothing better to do. Maybe you can help me by suggesting more eyeball wordplay.

A Beginner's Guide to Etegami

what is etegami?

Etegami (e= "picture"; tegami= "letter/message") are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words. They are usually done on postcards so that they can be easily mailed off to one's friends. Though etegami has few hard-and-fast rules, traditional tools and materials include writing brushes, sumi ink, blocks of water-soluble, mineral-based pigments called gansai, and washi postcards that have varying degrees of "bleed." They often depict some ordinary item from everyday life, especially items that bring a particular season to mind.